


Die and Let Live

by starbirdrampant (ineasako22)



Series: February Ficlet Challenge 2018 [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, February Ficlet Challenge 2018, Padmé Amidala Lives, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, prompt: character B can't sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineasako22/pseuds/starbirdrampant
Summary: Made for the February Ficlet Challenge 2018Prompt: Character B can't sleepPadmé Amidala never died at Polis Massa





	Die and Let Live

Obi-wan couldn’t say what was keeping him awake now, ten months after the rise of the Empire, stowed away in a friendly Corellian freighter with two sleeping infants to his left and their mother curled against his right hip, looking tired and worn in a way he hadn’t seen since an invasion on a small Mid-Rim planet, a lifetime ago.

Padmé’d been much younger then, a child-Queen with a steel spine to match any of the Jedi Master’s he’d known. Age had taught her to bend it, though she still remembered how to be unyielding when she chose.

He never thought he’d see when it broke.

“What are you thinking of?” Padmé mumbled from the floor. Her eyes were clear, wide-open despite the gloom. Not so asleep then.

“Anakin,” he replied, though he hadn’t been. 

Except… he was always thinking of Anakin. He’d killed his brother, left his body to burn and break on Mustafar, like a broken facsimile of a Jedi funeral. If the Jedi could see him now, they’d know the ghost that followed him.

Padmé inhaled slowly, saying nothing. She didn’t need to. Anakin was her ghost too.

She only asked him about Mustafar once, six months into their flight, hunkered in a back storeroom in Senator Chuchi’s family estate. She’d wanted to know what had happened after Anakin had thrown her away.

“I killed him,” he told her then, not saying that he’d probably killed himself.

Her silence lasted for two days, but in the end she told him, “I would have killed him too.” 

In the freighter, she didn’t ask him why he’d lied. She knew he hadn’t, just as he knew that it would have been her answer to him if he’d asked. They were ten months running, ducking from foxhole to foxhole, and looking for a place to shore up the door. They didn’t need to talk about ghosts.

“Once we get to the Lars’ house, I think we should stay for a while,” she said. 

She didn’t say for how long, but Obi-wan imagined that it would be until she couldn’t see Anakin-as-he-was standing in front of every shadow, or maybe until she could.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. He didn’t say that they’d stay until the Empire found them, because they wouldn’t. But they could stay until their ghosts grew still.

Padmé sat up then, and resettled herself until she could press her cold nose into the hollow under his jaw. Obi-wan drew his cloak around them both, and so they sat, in a half-empty cargo hold, pressing their matching scars together like it would make them whole.

**Author's Note:**

> Completely unbeta'd, any mistakes are my own. Check out my tumblr: [starbirdrampant](https://starbirdrampant.tumblr.com)


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